OMB should establish privacy standards that are at least a good as those in and recommended for the Do Not Pay Initiative to cover all government purchases of commercial databases with personal information. OMB should consider accomplishing an expansion by establishing a task force that includes representatives of consumer and privacy groups.

OMB deserves much praise for this novel privacy initiative, but it has more work to do. The evaluation of the first private sector database in the Do Not Pay Initiative needs to be accomplished in the open with full participation by all interested parties. The OMB memo provides for that. We need to see how well that process works.

The best starting point for understanding the OMB Do Not Pay memo is with the legal framework behind the Do Not Pay Initiative. The Initiative derives from a combination of little-noticed executive orders and updates to existing laws.

In 2009, Executive Order 13520, Reducing Improper Payments, [29] directed agencies to identify “ways in which information sharing may improve eligibility verification and pre-payment scrutiny.” This was the start of the current Do Not Pay Initiative.

You are reading the Executive Summary of Data Brokers and the Federal Government: A New Front in the Battle for Privacy Opens Report Links: Report Home & Executive Summary Download the full report (PDF) Jump to other sections of the report: Executive Summary | I. Introduction | II. Discussion | III. Recommendations | IV. Conclusion | Appendices Executive Summary The US federal government

To score is human. Ranking individuals by grades and other performance numbers is as old as human society. Consumer scores — numbers given to individuals to describe or predict their characteristics, habits, or predilections — are a modern day numeric shorthand that ranks, separates, sifts, and otherwise categorizes individuals and also predicts their potential future actions. This new report by Pam Dixon and Robert Gellman explores this issue of predictive scores and privacy.

This Jan. 30, 2014 report discusses a new right to restrict disclosure of health information under the updated HIPAA health privacy rule. The new provision called “Pay Out of Pocket,” also called the “Right to Restrict Disclosure” gives patients the right to request that their health care provider not report or disclose their information to their health plans when they pay for medical services in full. Navigating the new right will take effort and planning for patients to utilize effectively. This substance of this report is about the new patient right to restrict disclosure, and how patients can use it to protect health privacy.

This report focuses on government use of commercial data brokers, the implications for that usage, and what needs to be done to address privacy problems. The government must bring itself fully to heel in the area of privacy. If it is going to outsource its data needs to commercial data brokers, it needs to attach the privacy standards it would have been held to if it had collected the data itself. Outsourcing is not an excuse for evading privacy obligations. Report authors: Bob Gellman and Pam Dixon.